Project summary

This project aims to investigate law enforcement cyber responses to prevent, deter or counter Australian-based cybercriminal activities. It will map the national landscape of legislation and explore the role of law enforcement officers and staff in Federal and state/territory agencies, to identify models of best practice. Research outcomes will inform national security law in Australia and seek to address challenges faced by increasing globalization, inter-connectedness and digitization. By improving capabilities of multiple law enforcement jurisdictions against organised crime networks and their preparedness to combat cybercrimes in Australia, this research will have significant benefit to Australian society more broadly.


Project description

The Australian cyber threat landscape is becoming increasingly complex as the capability to commit cybercrimes are developed and extended across multiple law enforcement jurisdictions. While scholarship on responses to Australian cyber security incidents has largely focused on the urgent protection of Australian interests at the Commonwealth level, few studies have examined the interplay of legislation and law enforcement agencies at a domestic level. This project will seek to address this gap in scholarship by undertaking a novel study on the legal and operational guidelines for Australian law enforcement agencies acting to disrupt cybercrime enterprises, that are home-grown or operating across state/territory jurisdictional boundaries.

The project will be conducted in two major parts.

The first part will critically examine the existing Commonwealth legislation and policy framework for how offensive cyber responses are coordinated to disrupt, dismantle or destroy domestic cybercriminal activities. This examination will include legislation and policies governing the activities of Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in a domestic setting (incorporating the Intelligence Services Act 2001, the ASIO Act 1979, the Defence Act 1903, the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979, the Commonwealth Criminal Code, the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and the new Electronic Surveillance Act proposed by the recent Richardson Review). The project will also examine Australian state/territory legislation to identify the freedoms and constraints of local law enforcement employing offensive cyber techniques to counter cybercriminal activity within their jurisdictional boundaries.

In the second part CIs will leverage extensive networks and established connections through ASPI to conduct a series of structured interviews with officers and staff in Federal and state/territory law enforcement agencies operating in the cybercrime domain. The interviews will target the executive decision-makers, managers, analysts and technical operators responsible for investigating, preventing or responding to cybercrime incidents. Utilising various cybercrime scenarios (ranging from small scale, financially motivated scams to sophisticated cyberterrorism events targeting critical national infrastructure), the interviews will seek to illicit perceptions and understandings of the legal and operational freedoms and constraints impacting the use of offensive cyber techniques in a domestic law enforcement setting. A particular focus of these interviews will involve assessing proportionality of responses and the possible impacts on the rule of law from a legal perspective.


Publication

View publications


Partner organization(s)

ASPI

Project members

Lead investigator:

Dr Brendan Walker-Munro

Senior Research Fellow
School of Law

Other investigator(s):

Dr David Mount

Lecturer in Criminology
School of Social Science